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The Early Word: Birthday Getaway

By Ashley Southall August 4, 2010 9:12 amAugust 4, 2010 9:12 am

President Obama earns an extra birthday candle Wednesday as he turns 49. He’ll spend most of the day in Washington, then skip off to Chicago for dinner with friends and a rare overnight stay in his Hyde Park home.

Mr. Obama will speak to the executive council of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., whose backing he needs for a free trade agreement pending with South Korea. The Wall Street Journal explains that in exchange for labor’s support, the administration is promising to enforce workers’ rights, something labor groups have said that previous free trade agreements failed to do.

The Chicago Sun’s Lynn Sweet adds that Illinois Republicans plan to use Mr. Obama’s Chicago visit to “inject” him into the Illinois Senate race.

Senate Watch: The Senate is is expected to vote by the end of the week on Solicitor General Elena Kagan’s nomination to succeed Justice John Paul Stevens, who has retired from the Supreme Court.

Senate lawmakers won’t vote on whether to ratify an overdue nuclear arms reduction deal with Russia until the fall, throwing the legislation into a hotly contested campaign season. The Times’s Peter Baker adds that “the long process of negotiation and ratification has pushed back the rest of Mr. Obama’s program and has raised obstacles to the more controversial measures,” like the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

The majority leader, Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, also pushed back a vote on legislation tailored to respond to the gulf oil spill for lack of Republican support.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports that the Obama administration could lift a moratorium on offshore deepwater drilling sooner than its Nov. 30 expiration.

Some Senate Republicans are calling for hearings to examine whether the citizenship clause in the Fourteenth Amendment was meant to confer citizenship on the children of illegal immigrants.

Profiled: The Times’s Eric Lipton and Eric Lichtblau look at the rising profile of Representative Zoe Lofgren, the California Democrat at the helm of the Congressional Ethics office. Her office could soon be conducting two public trials of Democratic lawmakers accused of improper conduct, Representatives Charles B. Rangel of New York and Maxine Waters of California.

Cemetery Overhaul: The Post reports that the Army secretary is revamping operations at Arlington National Cemetery after finding a “‘general breakdown in sound business practices’ that included poor financial oversight, violation of contracting regulations and a lack of competition for lucrative contracts.”

Terror: A group of human rights lawyers is challenging the Obama administration’s assertion that it can kill Americans accused of terrorism without trial.

Midterm Madness: Voters in Kansas, Michigan and Missouri set the stage Tuesday for the general elections in November.

In Missouri, Robin Carnahan, the Democratic secretary of state and daughter of a former governor, will run against Representative Roy Blunt, a Republican and the father of a former governor, to replace Senator Christopher S. Bond, a Republican who is retiring.

Missouri voters also supported a challenge to the insurance mandate in the new health care law. Residents in Arizona and Oklahoma are expected to vote later this year on similar proposals. The Times’s Monica Davey points out that the courts will likely weigh in on the mandate before it takes effect in 2014.

In Michigan, Rick Snyder, a Republican businessman, is up against Virg Bernero, the Democratic mayor of Lansing, to replace Governor Jennifer M. Granholm, a Democrat who is term-limited.

President Obama drew criticism on Thursday when he said, “we don’t have a strategy yet,” for military action against ISIS in Syria. Lawmakers will weigh in on Mr. Obama’s comments on the Sunday shows.Read more…